Google Gives $1,000,000 for Racial Justice Project

Google Gives $1,000,000 to Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative

The company said it wanted to respond to clear and present racial injustice in America. 

By: Angela Bronner Helm

Feb. 27 2016 11:11 AM

Bryan Stevenson speaks onstage at ‘An Evening With John Legend’ hosted by Politico to kick-off White House Correspondents’ weekend at Longview Gallery on April 24, 2015, in Washington, D.C.

Brad Barket/Getty Images for POLITICO

Tech giant Google announced on Friday that its philanthropic arm would be donating $1 million to Bryan Stevenson’s Alabama-based non-profit, Equal Justice Initiative.

The Harvard-educated Stevenson is a lawyer who has for decades fought the good fight—winning major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults in a deeply flawed American criminal justice system.

EJI has also created the nation’s first lynching memorial and fastidiously marked lynching sites throughout the South.

Justin Steele, a principal with Google.org and the Bay Area and racial justice giving lead told USA Today, “I think what’s exciting about what EJI is doing is that at a national level it is really trying to tell the untold history around race in this country and help people develop a deeper understanding for the narrative around race and how we have gotten to where we are.”

Google.org made the announcement during a Black History Month celebration at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters where Stevenson gave a speech on how the Google grant will help further his work.

USA Today reports that the racial justice grants were born out of a growing consensus inside Google that it must respond to the police slayings of African Americans and the fatal shooting of nine black citizens inside a Charleston, S.C., church last summer.

In November, Google.org made its first racial justice grants, giving $2.35 million to community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Google.org made four more grants, totaling $3 million.

Keeping in line with the activist mantra of organizing locally and thinking globally, the Equal Justice Initiative grant was the only grant gifted to a national non-profit—all other money was given to local organizations in the Bay Area working to eliminate racial disparities in education.

See Stevenson’s February 2012 TED Talk below:

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Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror documents EJI’s multi-year investigation into lynching in twelve Southern states during the period between Reconstruction and World War II. EJI researchers documented 3959 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 – at least 700 more lynchings of black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.

Lynching in America makes the case that lynching of African Americans was terrorism, a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynchings were violent and public events that traumatized black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. This was not “frontier justice” carried out by a few marginalized vigilantes or extremists. Instead, many African Americans who were never accused of any crime were tortured and murdered in front of picnicking spectators (including elected officials and prominent citizens) for bumping into a white person, or wearing their military uniforms after World War I, or not using the appropriate title when addressing a white person. People who participated in lynchings were celebrated and acted with impunity.

The report explores the ways in which lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this country and shaped the contemporary geographic, political, social, and economic conditions of African Americans. Most importantly, lynching reinforced a narrative of racial difference and a legacy of racial inequality that is readily apparent in our criminal justice system today. Mass incarceration, racially biased capital punishment, excessive sentencing, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities, and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were shaped by the terror era. 

No prominent public memorial or monument commemorates the thousands of African Americans who were lynched in America. Lynching in America argues that is a powerful statement about our failure to value the black lives lost in this brutal campaign of racial violence. Research on mass violence, trauma, and transitional justice underscores the urgent need to engage in public conversations about racial history that begin a process of truth and reconciliation in this country. 

“We cannot heal the deep wounds inflicted during the era of racial terrorism until we tell the truth about it,” said EJI Director Bryan Stevenson. “The geographic, political, economic, and social consequences of decades of terror lynchings can still be seen in many communities today and the damage created by lynching needs to be confronted and discussed. Only then can we meaningfully address the contemporary problems that are lynching’s legacy.”

• Lynching in America: Report Summary

For a copy of the full-length report, send us an email at contact_us@eji.org or call EJI at 334.269.1803.
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Google gives $1M to Bryan Stevenson's racial justice effort

Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY 1:26 p.m. EST February 26, 2016

(Photo: 510Media)

SAN FRANCISCO — Google.org is teaming with Bryan Stevenson and his non-profit Equal Justice Initiative to push America to confront its violent racial history.

The philanthropic arm of the Internet giant says it will help bring online the public education programs on racial justice developed by this Harvard-educated lawyer and author of the bestseller Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption so that millions of people can be exposed to them. And Google.org is giving $1 million to the Equal Justice Initiative to support Stevenson's broader efforts to create civil rights landmarks such as the nation's first lynching memorial and memorial markers at lynching sites.

"Our mission statement is universal access to information and knowledge for everyone. I think what's exciting about what EJI is doing is that at a national level it is really trying to tell the untold history around race in this country and help people develop a deeper understanding for the narrative around race and how we have gotten to where we are," said Justin Steele, a principal with Google.org and the Bay Area and racial justice giving lead.

Google.org made the announcement at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters during an event with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and hosted by Alphabet executive David Drummond to celebrate Black History Month and the company's African-American employees known as the Black Googler Network. Stevenson gave a 20-minute talk on how the Google grant will help further his work.

Alphabet executive David Drummond with Google founders Larry Page, left, and Sergey Brin, right, celebrate Black History Month at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters on Thursday night. (Photo: 510Media)

The great-grandson of slaves who was raised in a racially segregated area of rural Delaware has for decades challenged racial bias and economic inequities in the nation's criminal justice system, coming to the aid of condemned prisoners and exonerating innocent ones and fighting to end life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders.

Last year, Stevenson spoke of that work at Google Zeitgeist, the company's annual conference for customers and other guests. Afterward, he spoke privately with top executives. Soon Steele says his phone lit up with messages: "Are we funding him?"

"We realized we are not going to make progress on race, racial equality and justice until we change the temperature outside the courtroom, until we create a different kind of conversation and we are really committed to that," Stevenson said in an interview.

"What Google allows us to do is not only to have resources that can really advance our work in this area but Google is also going to be a really important partner. They have the skills and the knowledge and the innovative techniques to allow us to do this work in a way that engages a broad cross section of our nation."

"We have been looking for ways to amplify that information, that work, that voice, that narrative. I can't think of an entity in the world that is better at amplification than Google. For us, this is a dream come true. We imagine that we can innovate together in this area of racial justice and that's incredibly exciting."

USA TODAY

Bryan Stevenson to Silicon Valley: Go into communities

The grant is another bold step from Google which has begun taking a rare public stand on racial justice for a major technology company.

In November, Google.org made a first wave of racial justice grants, giving $2.35 million to community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area that are taking on systemic racism in America's criminal justice, prison and educational systems.

USA TODAY

Google.org gives $2.35 million to groups fighting for racial justice

This week, Google.org made four more grants, totaling $3 million. The Equal Justice Initiative was the only national non-profit, the others are all organizations in the Bay Area working to eliminate racial disparities in education.

Google.org gave a second wave of racial justice grants at a Black History Month celebration at Google's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters on Thursday night. Pictured left to right: David Drummond, Alphabet's senior vice president, corporate development, with Google.org grantees: Bryan Stevenson, founder and CEO of Equal Justice Initiative, Dr. Jeff Duncan-Andrade, founder of Roses in Concrete Community School, Oakland, Landon Dickey, special assistant for African American Achievement & Leadership, San Francisco Unified School District, Alexandra Bernadotte, founder and CEO of Beyond 12, Richard Carranza, superintendent of the San Francisco Unified School District, and Justin Steele, principal of Google.org, (Photo: 510Media)Roses in Concrete, a school in East Oakland whose name was inspired by the book of poetry based on the writings of Tupac Shakur, will receive $750,000 for its work in "community responsive" teaching. 

My Brother's and Sister's Keeper initiative, a local version of President Obama's call for action to help increase opportunities for African-American youth, will receive $1 million for its work to give high school seniors the resources they need to pursue a college education.

Beyond12 will receive $250,000 to increase the number of low-income and first-generation students from underrepresented backgrounds who graduate from college through a personalized coaching and tracking service that gives them the academic, social and emotional support they need.

The racial justice grants were born out of a growing consensus inside Google that it must respond to the police slayings of African Americans and the fatal shooting of nine African Americans by a white supremacist in a Charleston, S.C., church.

Alphabet executive David Drummond (Photo: 510Media)

"Incidences of racial violence have again dominated our headlines, with the killing of young men like Tamir Rice and Jordan Davis, the deaths of Michael Brown and Sandra Bland, and countless other acts of injustice," Steele wrote in a blog post announcing the grants. "And it isn’t just heartbreaking individual stories.The data is troubling: African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. An estimated 40 percent of all students expelled from U.S. schools are black, and 30 percent are Latino. Of course, Google and our own industry need to do more to promote equality and opportunities for all."

"Social innovators can help us move closer to our ideals of equality and justice," he wrote. "That’s why last year Google.org launched a new, dedicated effort to support leaders who are doing critical work to end mass incarceration and combat endemic educational inequality for black and brown students."

Follow USA TODAY senior technology writer Jessica Guynn@jguynn